dunmer battlemage? the fuck.....my dark elf in skyrim was rogue/mage and my dark elf in oblivion was a straight up mage......prolly should try a battlemage in es one of these days. Right now im doing a medium armor wearing endurance oriented redguard warrior

I've never played Morrowind proper, I have the xbox version but its so dated I get bored, fast. Gonna try and get this overhaul mod working though, as I've heard nothing but great things about the game

off the boat, get the mushrooms, go to balmora, join mage's guild, hand in mushrooms, get second mission, steal all the soul gems, go to caldera, go to the creeper, go upstairs and take the orcish armour (they don't care/ no crime), sell everything to the creeper, profit.

power level to 15-20.

you are now powerful enough to do almost any guild/ go almost anywhere.

No. You just turn the difficulty slider up it's still just as challenging. (even at level 150-something it's impossible at the hardest difficulty). You just skip the boring "get this flower, kill these rats, delivery this letter" missions that you have already done some many times/ and the point in the game where you only hit your target 1/4 of the time.

I guess it wrecks the first couple missions of the first guild you do in balmora. But even if you just do a single mission from each of those guilds at a time you will get to the point where you are "over-leveled" too so It's not really a big deal.

It's fun doing stuff like "being an imperial guard", "becoming an assassin" "being a priest" or "joining a great house" as your first guild instead just being stuck in Balmora.

for once lakes, i totally agree with everything you just said. Morrowind is a masterpiece in every way besides it's engine and lol combat. Skyrim lacks depth and feels even more dumbed down than Oblivion was (compared to the much more difficult and cryptic game before it) but is still a huge improvement over Oblivion and really great as a casual rpg. Most questlines were engaging though if you really sink in the game is still pretty shallow. The world was amazing too and even though it was really really easy and even unrewarding it was still really enjoyable and did iron out some small issues that had been in every es game before it. and yeah, oblivion is pretty lame. Weakest ES I've played in just about every category. Daggerfall is really fun too, never owned it myself but played it a bunch of times with a friend. World is too vast and random to immerse yourself in though

about buying levels with gold. I guess I'm glad they limited it in the later games. But in morrowind getting to a point where you could fight the highest level stuff would take an eternity without it (I assume it would) since it takes so fucking long.

and even though Skyrim and Oblivion were way too simplistic, easy, and inconsistent in plots and writing (skyrim was more successful than Oblivion in that department though), I still love the ES lore once you really dive into it, and every ES game is so big and magical that I even enjoyed reading books and talking to people in a boring world like Cyrodil. Just goes to show that even with their flaws the most recent two ES games still present deep lore and vastness better than any other recent rpgs

If you really invest in skyrim and play it like D&D (or how I assume you play D&D) it's really fun.
Putting limits on how much you can carry, no fast travel and pretending the "hardcore" mode from
Fallout: New Vegas is on (or just modding lol) makes it a much more indepth games, it actually feels
set up to be played that way. The amount of shit you find walking from place to place instead of fast
travelling is incredible.

exactly. Same with Morrowind, except in Skyrim and Oblivion's case, I dont think you should have to pretend certain features arent there. They ruin the immersion. I never fast traveled in Skyrim for the most part because I found the world so beautiful and enchanting, but the world in Oblivion was bland and repetitive so I fast traveled a lot. In Morrowind if I had the option I still wouldn't. I love exploring Vvardenfell and one second being in a brown looking slum like Seyda Neen (still one of the best ES towns) to a masterpiece of a city like Vivec. The culture and cryptic feel of Morrowind make it so enchanting. Oblivion and Skyrim are both decent games, Skyrim perhaps being way above decent but they still don't fully feel like the adventures they should be because by appealing to console gamers and younger audiences, Bethesda has made their recent games way too simplistic and guided to be true adventures

Yeah good point. Like Morrowind had towns that served no purpose other than to make the world seems more real.

Suran was a really cool town but you almost never had a reason to go there plus it had a strip club but I think there is only one mission in the entire game that involves you going there. In Oblivion and Skyrim you would be there every 10th mission. Freeing slaves had no immediate reward other than your personal morals but if you freed enough slaves a really cool little side guide opened up. Then you even had stuff like building your own house (or building a town in the expansion).

Yeah. I mean I really like Skyrim despite its simplicity, but Morrowind is just on another level. I dont really hate Oblivion either but it's mediocre as a game and a joke compared to the rest of the series. Still they did the lore of Cyrodil and the Imperials really well in it. Idk every ES game has it's flaws and I think Oblivion is hilariously overrated but I guess on some level im Still and ES fanboy....i love the lore

lol yea wonarabbit its not like skyrim is a bad game and oblivion isnt absolute garbage but it's kinda like they dumbed those games down so much from Morrowind that things didn't feel challenging, rewarding, or necessary for the most part. I was particularly pissed off by how bad the ending to Skyrim's main story was. Didn't make any sense and it didn't feel epic or glorious or rewarding. The main story itself was actually pretty cool for the most part but it ended so poorly. Kinda like how Oblivion's main story was really lame (amazing concept though) but it had a great ending

i need to play more. Funny thing is, Im actually considering doing the game with god mode toggled. Reason being is I simply don't have time to put 400 or 500 hours in, and what I'm really interested in in Morrowind at this time isn't the challenge that the game presents so well, but the questlines and environment. I feel like running through not struggling in dungeons and such though might a. ruin the experience and b. be a cop out though

in terms of difficulty of enemies, yes, if youre an intelligent gamer who understands how to make a good build, it gets to a point where its not so difficult. However, what always remains a challenging adventure in Morrowind is questing locations and decisions. Without the quest markers and the fact that the world is so weird and huge it really takes effort to get where you need to go, which makes it such a great adventure

Although many elitists feel that Daggerfall is the best in terms of difficulty, quests and game mechanics for it's time, i think Morrowind is the best due to the immersion, the alien yet somewhat homely world of Vvardenfell, the memorable characters and events (who didn't remember Fargoth, Hainab or the Dremora who threatened to rape your body) and the amazing soundtrack. Sure, there were many flaws such as the combat system, exploitable game mechanics and dumb AI, but the game perfected what an open world RPG should be.